I know yeah the story is like almost stereotypical post-world tribal shit but holy goddamn the game looks absolutely stunning visually. Not for just open-ended games but possibly in general I haven't been this impressed since a very long time. There are also hi-tech sections that look straight out of Drakk design mixed with Triamid-style Unreal, plus the majority of enemies are all robotic dinosaurs and make sick sounds. And the weather system HOLY SHIT, the COLORS.Characters are very forgettable but the overall design/animation is top-notch. Gameplay is a mix of stealth and lots of fighting - you pretty much run around bombarding enemies full of arrows (normal ones, or flaming ones or EMP ones) or wacking them in a pretty heavy way or sneaky insta-kill way. The main girl character is closer to the original Lara Croft in terms of badassery and her controls are extremely smooth.The map is large and varied and there doesn't seem to be at least one bug? Didn't see any in a playthrough.

Either way, I believe this game fits perfect people who loved Unreal 1. It starts a bit slow but after a while you have a lot of freedom and it begins playing like a full-blown action shooter in incredible locations.

Jigoku wrote:Since I only have two games for mine I may look into it... (Uncharted 4 and Bloodborne. My avatar is from Bloodborne. )

I would really recommend. Still going on with it and it looks like it's also very inspired from The Dig (the same adventure game on PC which Triamid's visuals were based on) considering some alien locations full of mini metallic pyramids.Also holy shit the sounds are SOMETHING.

It's been one of my anticipated games since the reveal so I'm glad it mostly lives up to that. While I have a few issues (arrow hitboxes feel wonky as hell at times, especially vs humans), the combat is some of the best in the open-world genre, and I like how much it rewards planning and targeting specific points and weaknesses. It also actually handles the RPG stuff pretty well, and while the upgrades (both character and weapon ones) make you much stronger in the end, they're mostly lateral stuff that gives you more options rather than making you exponentially tougher, so, unlike how most AAA games with such systems handle it, things can still be a threat if you aren't careful or try to just brute-force stuff. It falls into cookie-cutter open-world stuff at times, but even that's mostly avoided by it showing some restraint rather than tacking on literally hundreds of things just because. For instance, the Ubisoft cliche tower-climb map reveal mechanic only has to be done five times with nice differences each time, as opposed to other open-worlds that literally have like fifty of them with even the few good ones inevitably getting crushed and forgotten under a mountain of "content". Given a few things that are hinted at it's a shame there aren't some giant machine bosses, but the default machine enemies are interesting enough for me to not be too bothered by that.

The writing actually pleasantly surprised me overall, especially given the developer's earlier Killzone games both ignored everything interesting about their backstory and delivered one of my most hated characters in a game ever (Rico). Despite it being a game about fighting laser robot dinosaurs there's actually quite a lot of restraint with the handling of various story aspects, and when it comes to stuff like learning details of why the world is like it currently is there's a certain haunting inevitability captured that could have easily be cheapened if it had leaned harder on melodramatic characters and reactions like most games would; and even the overall world building ends up being quite coherent and justified in the end. Even things like standard dialogue infodumps get some flavour because they're frequently driven by the protagonist's reactions to them, so they actually build character on top of saying things about the world (which is helped by the main character actually having some sort of personality in the first place). It's one of the best looking games out there, and probably my favourite open-world on a pure artistic level, that also extends to other areas, like it maintaining diverse character designs even for people who have basically no bearing on the game as a whole at all. Overall it's one of my favourite open-world games, and it also shows a lot of potential for expansion in the future. It's also nice to see a developer like Guerilla-who have been all over the place-make a game that seems to mark their maturation into a fully confident company on top of being a huge departure from their earlier stuff.

Yep, an expansion is in the works after the game sold so well and was received so well. I'm really glad all the efforts Guerilla put on this game (which to say the least it's really surprising) paid off.